


Goddess of Love and Beauty

by Blurble



Category: The Marriage of Aphrodite and Hephaestus (Greek Mythology)
Genre: F/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28065963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blurble/pseuds/Blurble
Summary: Aphrodite rose new from the sea foam and stepped out into the world, which she loved immediately because it was so beautiful.
Relationships: Aphrodite/Hephaestus
Comments: 15
Kudos: 55
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Goddess of Love and Beauty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> Content warning for:  
> Non graphic: canon-typical sexual assault, canon-typical ableism, canon-typical dysfunctional family and abuse.  
> None of these occur between the members of the main couple.

Aphrodite rose new from the sea foam and stepped out into the world, which she loved immediately because it was so beautiful. She loved the wisps of the clouds in the sky and she loved the way the gravelly beach crunched softly beneath her feet and she loved the crab with one arm missing that scuttled angrily under a rock as she approached.

There was still sea foam clinging to her but it was rapidly dripping off so that soon she was quite naked. She was shining too happily to be overlooked. The gods noticed.

Even as she wandered into the forest by the sea (and loved the dappled shade and the rotting log filled with mushrooms and the two slugs dangling together from a glittering rope of mucus having sex) the gods had begun fighting over her. Zeus and Ares and Artemis and Poseidon were tearing each other's hair out and yowling like a pack of cats in heat.

Hera watched her husband with the same bitter bile as always, and flew off to turn Aphrodite into an anglerfish or a botfly or a naked mole rat. But Aphrodite was the child of a Titan and could not be easily transformed, so instead Hera grabbed her by the hair and flew with her back to Olympus yanking painfully at her scalp the entire way. When the gods saw Aphrodite standing before them— the sea foam totally gone by then, but her hair still curled damply over her breasts— the effect was even worse than when they'd been snooping on her from afar and they all started babbling at once.

So Aphrodite's first impression of Olympus, her head still aching ferociously, was a bunch of drooling madmen with no manners shouting all kinds of nonsense at her at once, while others stood by and watched. It was only the second thing she'd encountered since her birth she did not love (the first was Hera).

"I'll give you power," Zeus said, and then stumbled a little when Hera kicked him in the knee.

"I'll give you glory," Ares said, and flexed. He smelled like blood.

"I'll give you all the treasures of the sea," Poseidon said, and held forth his hands to let pearls fall from them.

"I'll give you wildness and moonlight," Artemis said. "And a better time than any of these useless louts," she added.

Hephaestus didn't offer anything. He was fully aware he wasn't in the running, with his scarred face and bad leg. But he thought she looked cold and overwhelmed, so he offered her a cloak to wrap herself in.

She took it, looking at him. It was much colder on the mountain top then it had been by the sea.

He blushed deeply under her scrutiny. Most gods looked away if they accidentally let their eyes cross him, but she kept looking at him, steadily.

"What are you offering?" she asked. "This cloak?"

"What? N-no — I wasn't- I just thought you looked like you could use it," he said.

"Thank you," she said, and wrapped herself in it. Every female-attracted god present sighed regretfully and then glared resentfully at Hephaestus, willing him to scuttle back to his corner where he belonged.

But Aphrodite had reached out her hand to grasp his arm and he stood there rooted to the spot, unable to move.

"What are you offering?" she repeated. "Power? Glory? Riches?"

He forced himself to look her directly in the eyes.

"I won't be jealous or petty," he said. "And I will be careful to love you."

"Then I accept," she said.

The gods were shocked and then began to snicker. Oh, indeed, the beautiful goddess marrying the ugly and disabled craftsman who promised "not to be jealous". They knew where this went. Hephaestus, who knew them well enough to know their ugly thoughts, blushed even deeper, but he looked into Aphrodite's eyes and couldn't bring himself to regret anything.

* * *

This was their wedding night: slow, tender, awkward. Hephaestus prayed for the dark to cover his ugliness but Aphrodite felt for every one of his scars in the darkness and kissed them one by one. It took a bit of maneuvering to find a position that was comfortable for both of them. It took a little practice to find a rhythm they both enjoyed.

Afterwards they lay together and breathed each other's scents and Aphrodite twisted her fingers into Hephaestus's hair and bumped her nose gently against his. She laughed, and he laughed, and they fell asleep like that.

* * *

Hephaestus had only two goals his entire life: to make beautiful and useful things, and to never ever become anything like his parents.

Aphrodite didn't fit into the story he'd told himself of his life, she felt more like a dream than something real. But she was the goddess of beauty, and saw it in everything.

He made her bracelets and rings and armbands and crowns, of course. But he also made her a device for sending messages with pigeons, and a small metal frog that could hop and croak, and shoes that cradled her feet so she could run as fast as she wished and never tire. Aphrodite asked him to add little spikes at the ends as a decoration and he worked carefully to do so in a way that didn't destroy the careful balance of the shoe, or even break up the elegant symmetry of its design.

Sometimes the hammer struck wrong or the tongs slipped and what he made came out less than perfect. Sometimes what he imagined in his head refused to come out in his hands. And then as he moved to throw the latest misshapen lumpy mess into the fire to start over, Aphrodite would stop him. "It's good like this, also", she'd say, and so the bracelets she wore most often were the crooked ones. 

“I will never understand your taste,” Hephaestus would say, and Aphrodite would smile.

Meanwhile the gods waited patiently for Aphrodite to tire of her ball-and-chain husband. And then not so patiently.

Finally one day Zeus swaggered into Aphrodite's rooms and tried to rip off the deep red robe Hephaestus had traded a set of tongs for. Aphrodite kicked him in the crotch with her spiked shoes and when he fell on the floor howling in pain she stomped on him twice more for good measure.

Enraged, Zeus fled back to his home and Hera, and between the two of them they agreed that their bitch of a daughter in law needed to go.

Meanwhile Aphrodite knew she'd kicked a hornets' nest and went to Athena for advice. Athena wasn't exactly a fan of gorgeous unscholarly female goddesses but she was friends with Hephaestus and you had to be blind not to see the spark that had slowly warmed up in his eyes after his marriage. Also she hated Zeus.

So Zeus plotted with Ares and Aphrodite had long impassioned conversations with her husband, who was reluctant to leave Olympus.

"Your family is a swamp of poisonous, malicious vampires with no redeeming points, and I'm saying that as the goddess of love and overly rosy opinions," Aphrodite said.

"You're biased because they don't like me," Hephaestus said.

"That's not bias, that's further evidence of what useless wastes they all are. Not one of them deserves you," Aphrodite said.

Hephaestus, who had grown up his entire life being told he was worthless and inferior (when not having that lesson pounded more literally into him by being thrown from the mountain like so much unwanted trash) and had come to believe it despite his best efforts not to, was nonetheless incapable of fighting back against his wife's impassioned defense of him. Every time he tried to point out his own flaws she would angrily kiss him until he shut up. But he wouldn't have left Olympus of his own accord.

One day Zeus, smirking from ear to ear, called him over and dragged him back to his house. He pulled the door open with a dramatic flourish. "I had my suspicions-" Zeus began, then paused.

There on the bed was a naked Ares, as expected. He was struggling under a golden net. Aphrodite was not inside the net, though. She was distinctly outside it. 

“Uh,” Zeus said.

Hephaestus limped over to the bed and yanked at it. Little crackling bits of power dripped down between his fingers and fell sizzling to the floor as the net contracted, tightening against Ares’ body until it pressed painfully into the skin.

Ares made a noise of protest.

“I could rot your dick off if you prefer,” Aphrodite, goddess of venereal disease, offered. She didn’t let her voice wobble as she said it. 

Both Zeus and Ares swallowed.

"Right," Hephaestus said. He reached out to put his hand on Aphrodite’s, and she leaned in against him, tightening her fingers in his clasp. She was shaking, just a little. "We're leaving. And stay the fuck away from me, because I will kill you the next time I see you. Don't kid yourself that I can't."

"Hephaestus, darling, where are you going," Hera said, stepping in his way.

"You've always said I was an eyesore," Hephaestus said. "You should be thrilled."

"But who will shoe the horses and forge the swords?" Hera said.

"Don't know, don't care, not my problem," Hephaestus said, and began trekking down the mountain, still holding Aphrodite’s hand. He felt a ridiculous urge to pick her up and carry her away. Impossible. Even with the brace his leg was threatening to buckle underneath him as it was.

"I want to say something," Aphrodite whispered, and pulled on his hand a little, so he would stop walking. He stopped. 

She turned around to face his parents.

"I am the goddess of love and you have desecrated my domain," she said. "You will not follow us. And your hearts will not mend. And let every god here know that if any interfere with us again I will curse them with a madness that has no relief but death."

Then very gently she lifted Hephaestus into her arms and leaped from Olympus downwards, so that for once Hephaestus descended from Olympus embraced with love. 

They were caught by the clouds and the winds and brought to rest softly by the seaside where Aphrodite had been born. There they eventually had four children together, the gods of passion and grace and gratitude and friendship, and they lived there together happily ever after (except for when they did occasionally get dragged into some idiotic godly squabble despite their best efforts).

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Giving these two a happy marriage required some picking and choosing between various versions of the myth out there (there's only one source claiming Eros was conceived via Hephaestus, and I relied on my memory of the myth where all the gods made competing offers because I couldn't find the source for it) but I too have always had a soft spot for these two and welcomed the opportunity your prompt provided to write them happy together.  
> Thanks to HopefulNebula for the beta.


End file.
